The restroom was of course enormous, catering for multiple use, four washbasins and three toilets, nice balance, with dark brown marble, shocked with grey lightning strikes, chandeliers, taps the shape of spouting fish and towels vomiting out of cherubs’ mouths. There was, remarkably, an attendant waiting to clear up. A probability that this would only happen three, four times tonight. Did the woman leave when the men went in? Then the second part of the thought led her to the possibility of a separate gentlemen’s restroom. Surely not? That was something in a home; but it wasn’t really a home: it was an example in physical terms of extreme wealth.

She arrived at the table after the long walk back, enjoyed the courtesy of the pulled-out chair, although she did also appreciate the man from Japan, the diplomatic Daizō, standing up on her return.

Mr Lorken was off again, in more ways than one.

‘I don’t know why you are bothering. I wouldn’t even know what to sell them for. Give them to you probably. Rather than return them all the way to San Bernadino.’

‘OK, I’ll take them if that’s how you feel. Sell them to a hotel in San Diego.’

This time Lomita’s thought was voiced, she managed to extract a tense ejection of laughter from the two women.

‘Please, this is very unlike you Ingmar, this really is. I told you, come on darling.’

Lomita could guess what he had been told during her bathroom trip—

Shut it.

The softening of Mr Lorken came in the form of a presentation of how to make money. Always a good one, appreciated by all.

‘This is the man you should talk to, if you seriously want to invest. Arnott. Give him half a million dollars and he’ll put it into an art fund, and you’ll get a good return on your money. And now, Dinah, this is business on the Sabbath.’

The Bordeaux had released the beast.

Dinah looked down in exasperation. Her napkin hit the table.

‘Come on – talk about how much it cost to build our home, landscape our garden. How many seats you wanted in our screening room. The two kitchens, anything. It takes what we are talking about. I could go on.’

Please don’t, thought Lomita. Where did all that come from? Out of the apparent blue in the ceiling fresco. Her look returned to the table. Dinah now raised her head with a fixed glare, that indicated a row later.

‘Yes, always a percentage of the money in reserve.’

Tall and tanned was away answering an unasked question.

At least Lomita hadn’t heard the question, she was drifting a little, her concentration wavering with tiredness.

‘We sell at auction and with the right hype and the wind behind us we make some massive profits.’

‘What do you take?’

Lomita asked, back on track.

‘From the transaction, you mean?’

‘Yes.’

‘Twenty per cent.’